stormsthing1:

Ms. Swanson looked out onto her first
grade class, all of the students working on crafts. They were drawing
pictures to be put up as decoration on the walls for parent night,
and they would stay up as the teacher did her beginning of the year
individual meetings with parents.

For this activity, students were
allowed to move around the room as they pleased. Yes, the room got
rather loud as the children happily squealed and played with each
other, making scribbles and then pointing out to each other what they
had drawn, but they were happy, and having fun, which made Ms.
Swanson happy.

There was one little boy, though, who
was not joining in on the fun. He sat in the back table all alone,
all his table mates already abandoning him to talk with their own
friends. He had light blond hair that sat fluffy and almost spiky
around his face, his bad eye covered up with a combination of light
hair and a white eye patch, but the pink warped skin around it was
still visible. His little legs were swinging, not quite touching the
ground even in the small first grade chair that would be torture for
any adult. He had a pretty box of his own unused crayons sitting
before him, and one of them was gripped tightly in one hand as he
looked at the paper, and then started with feather light strokes on
the paper.

“Heya, Toby.” Ms. Swanson knelt
beside the boy, letting her red hair brush him gently.

“Hi, Ms. Swanson,” he looked at
her through the corner of his eye, looking over his nose and eye
patch.

“What are you drawing?” his paper
had hardly any color on it, and the crayon he’d been drawing with
looked brand new still.

“I don’t know.” his voice had a
wispy quality to it, and he never quite made eye contact with her.

“Maybe you should try pressing a bit
harder with your crayon? It would be easier to see the color if you
did that.” the young woman in her fifth year of teaching suggested,
as the boy moved his lone eye back to the page on the table.

“No.” was all he said, adding
another delicate line of yellow to the drawing.

This made Ms. Swanson’s brow furrow.
“And why not, Toby?”

His eyes briefly flashed to the crayon
box. “I don’t wanna run out of colors. They’re special.” he had
no change of face. He seemed very meek and remorseful.

“Why are they special?” at this
point Ms. Swanson pulled up a chair. Sitting in the little child
seats was not fun, but the floor was worse.

“They were bought for me.” another
delicate line in yellow.

That worried Ms. Swanson, just a tad.
“Did your dad buy those just for you?” she had read the brief
paperwork given to her that contained the basic information of each
child. On all of Toby’s paperwork—very little, as this was his
first year in school—she had never seen mention of a mother, and
was sure to not broach the subject with him. You only make that
mistake once.

He looked like he wanted to correct
her on something, little mouth open, and sucking in air, before he
seemed to change his mind.“Yeah.” Toby looked down even more,
looking more at his lap than his drawing. He delicately set the
yellow color back on the desk. “I don’t think he’d like to have to
buy me more.”

The teacher smiled softly at the
child. “Why don’t you go play with the other kids.” she
suggested, gesturing with her head to the other kids.

“Okay.” he slid off the chair with
his things in hand, and sat at an empty seat in a more crowded table.
The other kids there tried to start conversation with Toby, as
children will do, but the meeker boy only looked at them like they
had kicked a toy griffin. He was such a kind kid, but he was just so
quiet, and meek. He seemed almost scared of other people.

“Ms. Swanson! Lookie what I
drawled!” a little voice not quite high enough to be a pixie but
high enough to be comparable came with a tug to her long sleeve. Toby
was an issue that would have to wait a little while longer.

Toby’s father was not at the open
house, Ms. Swanson had noticed. Parents were all huddled around their
child’s desk, while the child excitedly pointed out what they’d been
doing, and pointing to their art on the walls, but the Pines child’s
desk was empty of both child and adult. That made Ms. Swanson frown,
but a glance at her schedule assured her that yes, she would be
meeting with him individually the next day.

And there he was that next day,
leaning up against the wall next to her room at four-thirty just like
they had worked out. Actually, it was four-forty. She was the late
one.

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Pines, a staff
meeting went long.” she apologized profusely, shaking his hand.

“No problem at all.” he assured.

“Good afternoon, Toby.” she smiled
at the fair haired child also leaning against the wall as she grabbed
her key card and swiped the door unlocked.

“Hello, Ms. Swanson.” he addressed
his shoes.

She led them into her classroom, into
the back where her oval table where she sat in a normal sized seat,
and the man and child before her sat in children’s chairs.

“Sorry about the chairs.” she
apologized, before beginning the compulsory ‘I’m so glad to get to
work with your child this year, he’s a good boy ready to learn’
speech, before launching into the specifics of Toby.

Mr. Pines—Tyrone—seemed like a
normal enough person. He was a string bean, fairly tall and slim,
with ruffled hair and a mischievous smile paired with brown eyes that
would look fine on a child or adult. Apparently, he was a scholar of
the Transcendence and the times right before and after. He looked and
acted nothing like how Toby’s demeanor had made her suspect him to be
like. He seemed genuinely interested in what was going on with Toby,
and sucked in the praise for his character just like any other proud
parent would.

She slid the affectionately named
‘Mommy Homework’ across the table to him, on a tablet. It was all the
normal things, ‘What medical issues does your child have?(Check all
that apply)’ and ‘Do you like in a permanent or temporary
residency?’. For being a scholar, the man was rather clumsy with the
fairly simple technology.

Toby was swinging his legs in a way
vaguely reminiscent of running, and was looking down at his knees,
which were devoid of the normal scrapes children receive while
roughhousing. He looked bored out of his mind, but not at all like he
was about to complain about it as most children would.

She leaned across the table a little
bit to talk to him. “Heya Toby, how you holding up?”

He gave her an almost startled glance
with his sole eye. “Fine.”

“You can go pick out a book from the
library if you want, and read while the adults talk.” she
suggested. When Toby had first arrived to her class, he already knew
how to read—in normal, every day writing, and the ancient script
from the Transcendence Era, and whenever he was given the
expressly-stated opportunity he would go and bury his nose in one of
the tablets in the library, curled up in a bean bag.

Toby’s eyes lit up at that, but he
looked up at his father before doing anything. “Can I?” the
whisper was aimed at the man best trying to decide what to put down
for ‘Guardian Contact Info.’ and ‘Emergency Contacts if You’re
Unreachable’ (Of course he would always be able to go out of his
way to get Toby). He smiled a
little at the kid, looking almost guilty.

“Yeah, course
you can kid. This’ll probably be while.” he patted the kid’s head a
little, and the kid shrunk down into his shoulders, like a turtle.

Toby sung his legs
to back his chair out from the table, and plopped his way down to the
floor, walking at a fairly fast pace to the library, where he picked
a book he’d been reading a lot off the shelf and snuggled into his
favorite bean bag chair, in the very back corner, facing away from
the rest of the room.

Tyrone briefly
whispered under his breath, something sounding like ‘I need to get a
bean bag’ before turning back to the teacher, and handing back the
paperwork all filled out with bogus information.

“Wonderful,”
the woman stated off-handedly, briefly scanning through the paper
work to ensure it truly was all filled out, and not with silly things
like ‘Dick Buttkiss’, sometimes it got ridiculous what these “adults”
wrote down. She made a mental note that Toby had asthma, which was
definitely a good thing to know.

“Now, I do have
a few concerns over Toby’s… behavior.” she prodded gently, and
took her time in deciding the best words to use.

The way Tyrone’s
face changed when she mentioned that was interesting to say the
least. He looked, angry, and suspicious like this was something he
knew was going to happen, and that he was waiting for and dreading.
His mouth curled into a slight snarl before quickly settling itself
out. This all happened in less than a second after she spoke.

It scared her.

“Has he been
acting up?” he said in a calm voice, that revealed none of the
micro-expressions that had flashed across his face so fast Ms.
Swanson entertained the thought that it had all been nothing but her
imagination.

“Quite the
opposite, actually,” she wanted to get out, out, out. Her legs
began to bounce up and down below the table, sensible flat-heeled
shoes making a slight clacking, and she clenched her hands together
so tight it hurt to keep them from trembling and spasming, and hoped
her smile would draw attention away from the sweat gathering at her
brow. “Actually, I’m concerned with how quiet and… submissive he
is.” hopefully her voice wasn’t as weak as she heard it.

The man across
from her did seem to calm with that, not in his face, which never
really changed, but just in that the air in the room got lighter, and
she no longer wanted to run until she couldn’t move anything. She
tried to lay her hands on the table relaxed, but they wouldn’t
unclench. She was calmer, not calm.

“Ah,
yes.” the man leaned back in his chair slightly, like he was
considering the best way to say something. “He did have… some
people in his past that would lead to that.” he would probably be
the only one to ever truly understand the meaning of those words.
“Those people are gone
now, and should stay that way, but, the road is long, you know?”

The woman who did
not quite know just how young she was nodded, both relieved and
horrified that her theories were half right. Horrified, because this
sweet little boy had been abused, she assumed, but relieved at the
same time because it was not the man before her, as he had said and
his word was so compelling, and that those people were in jail, most
likely.

“I
am very glad to hear that.” her voice quivered a little. The tone
Tyrone had taken when speaking of the ’gone’
people had shaken her up quite a bit more than she was willing to
admit to herself. Her two hands making one fist darted under the
table, and became tangled in her skirt.

She hurriedly gave
the little speech she gave at the end of all her meetings, saying
once more how glad she was to get to work with Toby, and how she was
sure it was going to be a great learning experience for them both,
and giving him her contact information if he ever needed her for
whatever reason.

Both
adults stood, and shook hands, Ms. Swanson praying he couldn’t feel
how clammy her hand was, and Tyrone relishing how panicked he made
her and how he could make her so much more–

“C’mon
Toby, time to leave.” he walked over to the deep blue corner of the
room assigned the task of ‘library’(nothing like The
Library) and slightly nudged the
bean bag(need to get one of those, good for mental
stability).

The child swung
his head around odd to get a look at the man. “Okay.” Toby
agreed, powering off the tablet he’d been reading on, and wasted no
time shoving it back onto it’s proper place on the shelf, moving fast
as he often did.

“Bye-bye guys,
it was very nice to meet you!” Ms. Swanson bade them farewell from
her doorway, listening to their conversation all the way down the
hall.

“Sorry for you
having to do that.”

“No problem.
Hey, lets go get some ice cream.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, the good
stuff with all those glittery toppings and such.”

“Thanks.”

Ms. Swanson smiled
as she stepped back inside, and closed the door, leaning against it,
breathing heavy. She liked seeing that little happy moment.

She never wanted
to meet Tyrone Pines again.